Invitation
Bi-coastal Meeting on Social Enterprise –Hype
and Promise
Society for International Development Seattle and Washington, DC
Chapters
January 22, 12-30 – 2:30
Sightlife – 4th Floor, 221 Yale Ave, Seattle,
WA (across from REI)
Social Enterprises - businesses whose primary purpose is serving the common good -
have grabbed the attention of the global development community because of their
promise for helping people meet their most pressing development challenges
at scale and in ways that are financially sustainable. New business models bring financial services
to underserved populations, deliver health services to the poor, develop
technologies that connect people with higher learning and economic opportunities
outside formal university degrees, and use supply chains to transform lives in
communities where products and materials are sourced. Through these pathways,
new private sector actors - impact investors, business incubators,
entrepreneurs, foundations, and global corporates, among others - are emerging
as voices for international development.
Please join us
January 22nd for SID Bi-Coastal Meeting when we will bring experts from Seattle and Washington, DC to
help us review some of the experience to date and explore what we can learn for
global development from successful social enterprises. We’ll look at how social enterprises help
communities and countries meet their development challenges and explore how
much is hype and how much is promise.
We’ll explore to what extent social enterprises affect and possibly
supplement donor investments in developing countries, and implications for
skills that development professionals need to bring to the table. We’ll explore the conditions that create a
healthy ecosystem for social enterprises - from idea to scale.
Speakers:
Seattle - Seattle is
known as a center of innovation excellence, and home to environmentally and
socially conscious consumers and investors who pursue the triple bottom line.
Whether small companies that are tackling social issues, or global
companies that are transforming their businesses to do good and well in their markets, Seattle is
home to a growing number of successful social enterprises. Who are they,
what are the challenges they're tackling, and what has been their impact
locally and globally? What can we learn from their experience?
Rashmir
Balasubramaniam (Founder of Nsansa Consulting)
Rashmir has over 20 years of experience
across the public, private and nonprofit sectors, and across a variety of
industries. She spent five years at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
where she led an initiative on private sector engagement and market-based solutions
across the Global Health & Global Development programs. She drove strategy
development and managed a diverse portfolio of grants for the foundation’s Water,
Sanitation & Hygiene Program. She has worked with a wide range of
organizations at global and local levels, including: International Planned
Parenthood Foundation, PATH, Technoserve, and the World Bank. She has also
worked in investment banking and finance in London with Ernst & Young, and
Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette.
Rashmir is an Adjunct Faculty member of the
Foster School of Business, University of Washington and Bainbridge Graduate
Institute. She teaches and mentors in a variety of other schools and programs,
including Middlebury College, the Indian Institute of Sustainable Enterprise,
and Fledge, a conscious company incubator. She co-developed and ran #SocEnt
Weekend with the founders of Fledge and Hub Seattle. She is a Director of
Sightline Institute, a sustainability thinktank, and Humanosphere, a global
health newsblog.
Brian Howe
(Founder of Seattle HUB):
Brian Howe helps people launch ventures
worthy of their humanity. He is the founder of Hub Seattle, a shared workspace
and community for inspiring entrepreneurs, changemakers and raconteurs. Brian
helped found and advises Fledge.co (a conscious company incubator), Arts Aftercare and SVP Fast
Pitch (“Shark Tank” for social innovators). He previously founded Vox Legal
PLLC, a law firm specializing in advising unique business structures, including
one of the largest nonprofit venture capital funds to invest in Indian
start-ups, a hybrid model for interplanetary commerce on behalf of NASA and
many others. He likes rooftops, building things and wrestling with his nephews.
Washington
DC –
Kate McElligott, Sr. Manager, Thought
Leadership and Strategic Partnerships, Grameen Foundation
Kate
McElligott is an experienced international strategy executive focused on
business development and marketing at Grameen Foundation. She is responsible
for managing key global corporate relationships and developing a comprehensive
thought leadership strategy. Prior to
joining the Grameen Foundation she was Director of Development for the
Microcredit Summit Campaign, where she secured financial support and
sponsorship for global summits in Bali, Indonesia and Cartagena, Colombia. She holds a Masters in Social Enterprise from
the American University School of International Service with a focus on innovation
in emerging markets. Kate currently serves on the board of Prosperity Catalyst,
a social enterprise start-up with operations in Haiti and Iraq. Kate is an avid
runner and yoga enthusiast.
Jennifer
Pryce, President and CEO of Calvert Foundation
Jennifer
brings nearly 20 years of finance and community development work to her role as
the President and CEO of Calvert Foundation. Since arriving at Calvert Foundation
in 2009, Jennifer has risen from the position of U.S. Portfolio Manager to Vice
President of Strategic Initiatives, then Chief Strategy Officer and now
President and CEO. In her role as Chief Strategy Officer, she led the
organization’s Strategic Initiatives team on raising capital, developing new
products and initiatives and marketing and communications. Jennifer has also
overseen Calvert Foundation’s wholly owned Community Investment Partners
subsidiary, which offers fund and asset management services for institutional
clients. Jennifer’s teams anchor their
work around the development of initiatives that combine a social issue with the
power of impact investing, such as the Women Investing in Women Initiative.
WIN-WIN, the only retail impact investing product available to U.S. residents
that is focused on supporting organizations empowering women, was launched by
the Strategic Initiatives team under Jennifer’s leadership. Jennifer received a
Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Union College and a MBA from
Columbia University. She serves on the Boards of Hitachi Foundation and
Groundswell.
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